The present state of the art uses normal diatomic fluorine, or nitrogen trifluoride and some kind of fuel such as hydrogen, ethylene, acetylene, or other fuel to produce the atomic fluorine. In these prior art devices, the fuel is burned with an excess of fluorine or nitrogen trifluoride so that in addition to combustion products a certain amount of atomic fluorine will be produced. In this process, such products as hydrogen or deuterium fluoride and fluorides of carbon are produced. These other products are universally deleterious in that they eventually deactivate vibrationally excited laser gas. That is, the mixture resulting from the combustion products usually include atomic fluorine, diatomic fluorine, hydrogen or deuterium fluoride and fluorocarbons that are expended through nozzles and mixed with hydrogen or deuterium as the case may be in a lasing chamber. This results in a reaction of hydrogen or deuterium with the atomic fluorine to generate vibrationally excited hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride. These compounds of hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride, being in a vibrational population partial inversion, are the source of the laser power. The presence of the other molecules from the combustion products causes deactivation of the vibrational states of the hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride and a lessening of the available laser energy.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a method and apparatus whereby the amount of deactivating molecules in a hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride laser can be reduced to an insignificant amount.
Another object of this invention is to provide a hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride laser in which a correspondingly increase in laser power output can can be realized by a reduction of the deactivants introduced with the atomic fluorine into the laser chamber.
A further object of this invention is to provide atomic fluorine by the application of externally applied heat to diatomic fluorine to convert it to atomic fluorine.
A still further object of this invention is to apply heat to inert gases that in turn transfer the heat therefrom to diatomic fluorine or a fluorine compound to convert the fluorine to atomic fluorine.
Other objects and advantages of this invention will be obvious to those skilled in this art.